# NTFS and other OS's **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2001, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ntfs-and-other-oss/49025 "2001-01-08T17:18:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2001, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ntfs-and-other-oss/49025/1 "2001-01-08T17:18:35Z")
Do there exist drivers or extensions or whatnot that would enable any operating system other than NT/W2K to mount a drive formatted in NTFS? ---
**Author:** ![Egad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Egad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egad)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2001, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ntfs-and-other-oss/49025/2 "2001-01-08T17:28:51Z")
As far as I know, the _only_ other OS that can mount an NTFS drive would be Linux ( and possibly not all distros ) and only with a newer kernel upgrade. I don’t know about Win ME. Trust Microsoft to make an OS that can’t be read by it’s other OSes. Hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong. Things change all the time after all… ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2001, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ntfs-and-other-oss/49025/3 "2001-01-08T18:28:33Z")
Linux would do. And probably, if Linux has a driver or extension or kernel-modifiers-that-load-after-booting-whatchamacallit (can’t remember the UNIX name for it, one of those lower-case TLAs), then it can be ported for Mac OS X, at least at the BSD level. But I’d settle for Linux, I can do Linux. (sort of). Any further info would be appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![kinoons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a698b9/32.png) [@kinoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kinoons)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2001, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ntfs-and-other-oss/49025/4 "2001-01-08T18:35:08Z")
Windows ME is built on the same kernel as Win98 – I would not expect it to be able to read off a NTFS drive. Atleast if it can I havent gotten it to work yet. ---
**Author:** ![Eft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b782af/32.png) [@Eft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eft)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2001, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ntfs-and-other-oss/49025/5 "2001-01-08T19:52:50Z")
The OS kernel isn’t the important part, it’s the file system drivers. Since Windows 9x OSes don’t include the NTFS drivers, they can’t read NTFS volumes. Same reason that NT couldn’t read FAT32 volumes natively but Windows 2000 can, even though NT and Win2K use the same basic architecture: NT 4 didn’t have FAT32 drivers. Check out [http://www.sysinternals.com/](http://www.sysinternals.com/) for tools for adding file system drivers to OSes that don’t normally include them. Incidentally, NTFS is not an OS (operating system) it’s a FS (file system).